Heartache unbound
by Jack of the North
Summary: Hermione's checked out and Harry can't get her back. Not a Harry/Hermione fin, actually Hermione/Remus.


_A/N Okay, so this won't make much sense on its own, but it's not supposed to. It's part of a series of oneshots and it comes towards the end. It was supposed to be part of a story but I knew if i started writing it, I may never get through it to post this chapter. So, think of this as a jumping off point with sequels and prequels to come. _

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The sun rose and faded again but sleep would not come. She prayed for it, begged for it. Pleaded for the numbness she knew would envelop her with the blanked of unconsciousness. But it did not come and the pain grew exponentially greater. Every minute that she stayed awake, thinking, feeling, the raw hole in her heart gaped wider.

Her mind went over every decision, every event, and every mistake that had been her doing. Her mind formed a time line of everything that had happened and it all led back to her.

A knock sounded, momentarily breaking in her brooding. She ignored it, like she had the other, but whoever it was had decided she had ignored reality long enough.

"Are you ready to talk?" Harry asked.

Hermione didn't answer and Harry let himself in.

He lay down next to Hermione, curling up against her side. Hermione grabbed his hand, bringing it over her body to hold against her chest. As a sob racked her body she realised that despite the hole in her chest, she had yet to shed a tear since she came home, to their home, to their bed.

"I – I'm lost, Harry. I'm so lost. What do I do now?"

Harry tightened his grip around his best friend and drew her closer. Burying his face in her soft hair, he allowed it to catch the tears that matched Hermione's in their pain and ferocity.

"I don't know, Hermione. I just don't know."

The pain in her heart deepened, stretched. It was like the ocean and she was drowning in it. Her body felt like ice and Harry's warm body next to hers did nothing to warm it. Heat was a foreign concept to her, like something she had read once in a book, experienced by the native tribesman of a far away land. After a while their sobs stilled.

"Aren't you cold?" Hermione wondered, her voice choked.

She felt Harry shrug behind her.

"I'm not really anything," Harry said quietly.

Hermione sighed and wriggled back further into his embrace.

"I'm so cold."

Through the window, the moon in all its glory, bathed the room in its silvery glow. It was so full and bright, that if you looked close enough, you could make out the craters on its desolate surface.

"I asked him once," Hermione whispered. "What he hated most about being a werewolf and do you know what he said?"

"The moon?"

"That's right. He said he hated missing the beauty of the moon."

"There was no one on this earth like him."

"Not a soul."

Hermione felt the cool air drying the tears on her face, only to have her cheeks wet again moments later with the silent weeping that refused to stop. She didn't know when she had begun to cry again, but it wasn't like before. Now her grief flowed through her blood, like a drug in her veins.

A sadness and resignation drenched her body, washing away the disbelief and shock and leaving a bitter aftertaste.

Hermione swallowed and ran her tongue around her mouth, trying to define the horrible, lingering taste. But it was indefinable and Hermione simply labelled it death.

"Hermione, I know it's hard," Harry said quietly, a little while later.

"I'm not ready yet, Harry," she whispered.

Harry sighed but let her be; allowed her wallow silently a while longer.

She still clutched his hand to her chest, her legs entangled with his.

As the moon sank and they drifted in and out of sleep, blissful sleep, it became obvious that Hermione was not going to talk on her own.

So Harry started.

"I don't think I was ever so proud as when he asked me to be Godfather to Teddy. And at the same time it broke my heart, because it shouldn't have been me. Dou you know what I mean?"

Hermione swallowed and cleared her throat. She was still not ready to talk but she knew that she had to.

"If you father had been alive, he would have been the Godfather. You can't help but feel like the second choice."

"Exactly. But then you know what I realised?"

"No."

"It doesn't matter. I'm Teddy only choice. It doesn't matter that Remus might have wanted my father to be alive to do it. Or even Sirius or that they may have done a better job. They're not here and I'm Teddy only choice. And no one on this earth will love him like I will.

Do you see what I'm saying?"

"Is see what you're trying to say, Harry, but it's not the same. I'm not Teddy's mother. I love him more than I thought possible, but it's not enough. I still don't love him the way his own mother did."

"What was his first word?"

"Dada."

"When did he fist walk?"

"Three weeks before his first birthday."

"That's his favourite toy? What story does he like before bed? What song do you sing to calm him down?"

"It doesn't matter, Harry!" Hermione shouted, sitting up. "It doesn't matter if I know ever bruise, every scar. If I can tell you why he likes his bear better than his dragon of that if you tickle his ear, it wakes him up. She won't let me have him! Mr Tonks said she will fight me every step of the way. She said, 'I won't have my daughter's son raised by the werewolf's mistress."

Hermione's family had been wrenched away from her in a single night and she was powerless to stop it. As Remus' lover, she had no legal claim to his son.

"I'm sorry, Hermione."

He tried to catch her eye but she refused to look at him, instead staring out into the growing day.

"What do you want from me, Harry? My assurance that I'm going to be fine? That I don't blame myself? That if you leave me alone I won't be tempted to brew up a lethal potion for myself?"

"Hermione!" Harry was so shocked. He'd never, ever, seen Hermione so resigned to misery and failure. It was written across her face; she'd stopped trying. He searched her eyes, her lips, the set of her brow, trying desperately to find some hint of the fiercely independent young woman she had been but she was gone. That part of her had died with Remus and any hop of reviving her had been stolen away with Teddy. The woman in front of him breathed, talked, moved like Hermione, but she wasn't her. The Hermione he knew was dead.

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_A/N 2 PM or review if you have any questions._

_New 'chapters' will be posted as stories, so don't alert to this story, alert to me (author) if you want to read more. _


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